We celebrated end of school with a buffet dinner at Ri Cora, which is becoming something of a tradition.

At the end of the evening I realized I hadn’t taken a single photo, although I’d gone there with a firm plan to take some. Especially since I get so few photos of Ingrid and Adrian these days, when they’re mostly doing their own things in their own rooms. We were almost home by this time, so I asked them to slow down to give me time to get out the camera. Their interpretation of “slowing down” was a slow-motion walk.

And then posing for the camera, with hair-smoothing and twisted bodies. (For Adrian’s last school photo earlier this year, the photographer had him twist this and turn that and put his hand there, and he said it had felt incredibly awkward.)


Eric biked home so I didn’t get any of him at all. But we do have a summer vacation coming up so I’ll get more chances.

End of school, and Solhemsskolan’s usual ceremony. After 10 year’s it’s becoming a bit old, but I guess the kids appreciate the tradition.

In all the ten-plus years we’ve never had bad weather. There was one year when we brought our umbrellas but ended up not needing them. And it’s not like June is always sunny – there was that one year when we had such horrible weather on midsummer (I think it was only 15°C) that we celebrated indoors. We’ve been lucky.

One part of the tradition is that the youngest pupils give roses to the oldest ones, leaving school at the end of grade 6. I remember when Ingrid was giving a rose, how old and big the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds looked. And in a way they still do, but also not.

Adrian proudly finished the year with eight A grades.

Poppy flowers are so red that it feels like a visual glitch, like burnt-out pixels, like a hole in reality.

Not bad! Took me most of the weekend, but it came out pretty nice. Incredibly soft and comfy, almost makes me want to cuddle with it. A few slightly uneven seams here and there, but nothing that anyone will notice without a very close inspection. My top-stitching is never as even as I’d like, and it was extra tricky with a floppy fabric that would not stay as folded.

I could probably have had it finished in half the time if I hadn’t decided on flat felled seams. But they’re going to feel so much nicer, and be more durable as well.

The internet, by the way, is full of tutorials for felled seams; there are endless numbers of sewing tutorials out there and felled seams are a popular topic, I guess, because they look so professional but aren’t actually difficult. But those tutorials all stick to the basics and I couldn’t find a single one that covered more advanced topics – such as, how do you sew the meeting of two felled seams? I don’t know if it’s because no sewing expert has written about it, or because Google has gone to the dogs. Which it definitely has; it used to be possible to force the search to include every word in my query but now Google just ignores what I type and goes for the most popular results. “Hey, I know you typed something else, but how about you read this thing instead, I think you’ll like it better.” No, I don’t.

Where my felled seams meet, they sort of fall all over each other and get a bit tangled, but it’s all hidden anyway so that’s OK.

Why do my felled seams need meet each other, anyway? A simple dressing gown just has some straight armhole and side seams, right?

That would have been true if I had just followed the pattern. Unfortunately the pattern I bought looked good on the sketch but that turned out to be an “artist’s impression” only, and reality was different. Like the “artist’s impressions” of proposed new city squares that are all sunny and have trees in little containers and happy young people walking around, and by the time reality arrives the trees are gone and in their places there are garbage bins.

In the sketch the dressing gown was clearly wider towards the bottom and had a nice wide overlap in the front. In reality the body was all straight lines, which was the one thing that I did not want. I am never going to trust another pattern from Svenska Mönster again.

The way the pattern pieces fit on the fabric, I couldn’t easily make them wider, so I added extra pieces in the side seams. (I’ve now learned that the technical term for these is “godet”.) The result is maybe not as sleek as it could have been, but it definitely fits me better. If godets were good enough for the tunic of the Bocksten Man, they’re good enough for me as well.

It was rather satisfying to have filled my need for comfortable summer dresses, so I’m bravely embarking on the next project.

For years now I’ve wanted a nicer light-weight dressing gown. My current one is shiny and glossy and looks almost unworn after fifteen years of use – but it achieves all of that because it’s 100% polyester and feels like plastic against my skin. And it’s too short – I can walk around in it, but not lounge on the sofa without feeling half-naked.

It’s one of those problems that simmers in the background and never becomes urgent. I’ve ordered two potential replacements from a second-hand marketplace; both came with their own problems and ended up donated to a charity shop. Mostly due to fit: standard dressing gowns are straight in shape, which makes them gape around the knees as soon as I move around. And the problem remained.

Sewing those dresses was maybe not the most fun I’ve had, but the results were good. How much harder can a dressing gown be? Last week I went fabric shopping again, and found this beautifully soft double gauze. It caught my eye as soon as I entered the store – the light-weight summer cottons were displayed right on the counter – and nothing else could compare. Of course it turned out to be more than twice the price of the other gauzy cottons… Now the result will have to last me another fifteen years. Although since it’s cotton rather than polyester, it might actually wear out with time.

Ingrid’s school year is already over, and she finished her first year of high school with As in all subjects. Some came more easily, but she kept fighting all the way to the end in the ones where she was hovering between an A and a B. She spent so many hours practising her French verb tenses – every single day, for weeks – for the last major test, and it all paid off!

Adrian needs hiking sandals for our upcoming summer adventures, so we measured his feet. 25.5 centimetres from heel to toe, size 41 – which is a full two sizes up in just half a year.

The sweet spot, with him and Ingrid and me all having the same size, didn’t last long at all.

The best drinking water, in Nysse’s opinion, is the one on a flower pot saucer. Not that he doesn’t drink from his own drinking bowl – but there is something about this muddy water under the flower pot that makes him come back to it again and again. Even when I’ve just changed his own water.

Since he drinks like a slob, splashing almost as much water on the side as he gets into his mouth, this always ends with a small puddle on the window sill.

I’ve tried giving him a (clean) terracotta saucer of his own, right on the same window sill, but apparently it’s not as good as the one with the traces of mud and limescale.

500 years since Gustav Vasa was elected king of Sweden, which ended the Kalmar union and made Sweden an independent country.

(Fancy cake by Ingrid.)